Water and Wilderness

40 Days in the Wilderness

Every First Sunday of Lent, whether we are in Year A, B, or C, the lectionary has the Temptation of Jesus featured in the Gospel reading. This is because our 40 days of lenten devotion are to be modeled off of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness. Unique to Year B, however, because Mark’s account of Jesus’ temptation is so brief, we get to hear of Jesus’ baptism as well. The fact that Jesus’ baptism is directly connected with his temptation in the wilderness is not coincidental or secondary. These two events in the life of Jesus are integrally connected. At his baptism, Jesus is declared to be God’s Son, and while the term certainly has royal and ontological overtones, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Israel is first referred to as God’s son in the Exodus event. In the Exodus event, Israel experienced its own baptism when it passed through the waters of the Red Sea and then was tested in the wilderness. Jesus is recapitulating Israel’s story by passing through the water and then heading out to the wilderness to be tested by Satan, and we in turn recapitulate Jesus’s story. Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness, and so we spend 40 days in Lenten devotion.

Wilderness People

In this way, the Exodus event becomes a model not only for Jesus’s life, but for our lives as well. We were once enslaved to sin but have been set free. We have passed through the water, and now we find ourselves in this wilderness that we call life, and here is where we will remain until the the day comes that we pass through the waters of the Jordan in death and come to the Promised Land of resurrection and eternal life. To put this another way, from the moment we pass through the waters of baptism until the moment we die, we are wilderness people, not spending merely 40 days in the wilderness but our entire lives. We are wilderness people. Since our baptism, we always have been wilderness people, and until our death, we always will be wilderness people.

Noah and Baptism

But unique to the First Sunday in Lent for Year B isn’t only that we hear both of Jesus’s baptism and his temptation, but also we hear of Noah and the ark, of which Peter says, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you.”

1 Peter 3:21 ESV

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

Depending on one’s baptismal theology, this statement is either highly surprising or not surprising at all. There are some Christians for whom baptism is a thing that all Christians should do, but it certainly isn’t a must. There are also some who call themselves Christians for whom baptism is so central to salvation that one cannot be saved without having been baptized. In fact, there are some who will argue that unless you were baptized with the knowledge that your baptism was a salvific act, your baptism didn’t even count. This latter group isn’t usually considered a part of the universal Church, but there are certainly those who take that position.

This is not the appropriate context in which to unpack fully a biblical theology of baptism, but as we continue onward in our 40 days of Lent there is something that I want us to understand. When Peter says that baptism, which corresponds to God’s salvation of Noah and his family through the ark, now saves us, he does not mean that baptism is a salvific event. He does not mean that all that matters is whether or not you have been baptized. We know this because he says that baptism saves us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 3:21 ESV

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

And Jesus Christ has been raised whether or not any of have ever been baptized. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward grace or reality by which a person is united to Christ forever by faith so that what is true of Christ becomes true of us, so that what matters is not our life, our baptism, and our death, but his life, his baptism, and his death. His story becomes our story, which is why, in his great list of “ones,” Paul can say that there is only one baptism. He writes to the Ephesians,

Ephesians 4:4–6 ESV

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Noah and Salvation

So, if Peter doesn’t mean that baptism is the necessary action by which a person is saved, then what does he mean? Since Peter has Noah in mind, let’s consider how God saved Noah from the flood for a moment. Did the ark stop the waters from covering the whole world? No. Did the ark stop the rains from beating on the roof of the boat? No. Did the ark stop the wind and waves from tossing Noah and his family wherever they pleased? No. So what did the ark do? The ark kept Noah and his family safe while the chaotic waters of creation did their very worst, and in this way Noah was saved. This, according to Peter, is the model for the way in which baptism now saves us. The point I’m trying to make is that having been baptized doesn’t mean that the storms will stop. It doesn’t meant that the world around us won’t continue to do its worst. I think we’ve all felt that recently. I know I have. Baptism doesn’t mean that the harsh realities of the world will suddenly go away, but it does mean that God will always provide a way through whatever the wind and the waves and the wilderness may bring. It does mean that the words spoken over you at your baptism are true no matter how much the waves and wilderness (if you’ll allow me to continue to mix metaphors) beat you down and wear you out.

Baptism and the Wilderness

This truth is why the order of events in this morning’s Gospel reading matters. We pass through the waters first. We are declared to be God’s children first. We are united with Christ forever first, and then we are sent out into the wilderness to be tried, tested, tossed around, and even torn apart. We have passed through the waters, yes, but we still have so much of Egypt left inside us that we need the wilderness to strip all of that away. We have too much Adam and not enough Christ, and that’s what the wilderness is for, that’s what Lent is for: to help us put to death the old man so that we might become more like the new ; to help us put Adam to death inside us so that we might become more like Christ every day.

That is how we must approach Lent and the struggles of our daily lives: knowing that we are safe in the ark of our baptism. We have been united to Jesus Christ, and what matters most is not what is true of us but what is true of him. So, we don’t come to Lent seeking to prove our spiritual strength nor to earn what has been already given freely. Rather, we come to Lent seeking to rid ourselves, step by step as we wander through the wilderness, of all that is not true of us by nature of our baptism. This is why remembering our baptismal vows is so important.

Wilderness Now; Promised Land Later

God does not promise his children that life will be easy. In fact, the opposite is true. Jesus is declared to be the Son of God, and he is immediately sent out into the wilderness. What God promises his children is this: wilderness now; Promised Land later. What’s true of you is what’s true of Christ. N. T. Wright says, “The whole Christian *gospel* could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day[: you are my beloved child.] [God] sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ.” And so we can face the wilderness of our lives, we can face the trial and temptations, we can face pain, suffering, and death, because who we are is secure in Jesus Christ. Let’s us then head out to the wilderness these 40 days, not to earn nor to prove, but to prune, to do away, step by step, with all that is left inside us that is not Christ so that we might become who we already are in Jesus Christ.

Amen.